Overview

Contending for American Nationhood: Joseph Story and the Debate Over a Federal Common Law offers a study of one of the early republic’s fiercest legal debates, one of the Supreme Court’s most understudied jurists and constitutional theorists, and the enduring tension between two irreconcilable understandings of the American union. It explores the conflict between two competing theories of the American union in the early years of the republic: the Nationalist Theory, which posited that the union was the creation of the national American people, and the Compact Theory, which portrayed the union as a compact between the peoples of the several states who had each separately decided to join to form the union. Benjamin Clark employs this underlying debate as a framework for understanding the debate over federal common law in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The book gives particular attention to the constitutional thought of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, examining how these two seemingly-separate issues—the federal common law question and the existence of American nationhood—came together in Story’s constitutional theory.

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9781666965841

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Reviews

"""The political and constitutional genius of the Early Republic, while often neglected and misunderstood, provides contemporary Americans with a tremendous guide to appreciating the nature of politics and the law. Among the defenders of a strong, national government, no other American jurist, with the possible exception of John Marshall, defended the national theory of politics and constitutionalism with as much energy or ability as Joseph Story. Thanks to Dr. Clark's new tome, the thoughtful reader can now better understand the vital importance of Joseph Story to the national theory of American government and constitutionalism. Following in the great tradition of scholarship on Story established by James McClellan and Kent Newmyer, Clark provides an exceedingly balanced and erudite of study of Story, and Clark, for the first time, lucidly and convincingly compares Story with his critics, including Jefferson, Tucker, Calhoun, and Upshur. This book fills a critical lacuna in scholarship and deserves a wide readership."" H. Lee Cheek, Jr., Dean Emeritus, East Georgia State College, and author of Calhoun and Popular Rule, among other books. --H. Lee Cheek Jr., East Georgia State College"

Author Information

Benjamin Clark is a senior lecturer at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia where he teaches courses in political theory and American government.

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